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CHAPTER XXII - THE GREAT BARN AND THE SHEEP-SHEARERS
MEN thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often
by not making the most of good spirits when they have them
as by lacking good spirits when they are indispensable.
Gabriel lately, for the first time since his prostration by
misfortune, had been independent in thought and vigorous in
action to a marked extent -- conditions which, powerless
without an opportunity as an opportunity without them is
barren, would have given him a sure lift upwards when the
favourable conjunction should have occurred. But this
incurable loitering beside Bathsheba Everdene stole his time
ruinously. The spring tides were going by without floating
him off, and the neap might soon come which could not.
It was the first day of June, and the sheep-shearing season
culminated, the landscape, even to the leanest pasture,
being all health and colour. Every green was young, every
pore was open, and every stalk was swollen with racing
currents of juice. God was palpably present in the country,
and the devil had gone with the world to town. Flossy
catkins of the later kinds, fern-sprouts like bishops'
croziers, the square-headed moschatel, the odd cuckoo-pint,
-- like an apoplectic saint in a niche of malachite, --
snow-white ladies'-smocks, the toothwort, approximating to
human flesh, the enchanter's night-shade, and the black-
petaled doleful-bells, were among the quainter objects of
the vegetable world in and about Weatherbury at this teeming
time; and of the animal, the metamorphosed figures of Mr.
Jan Coggan, the master-shearer; the second and third
shearers, who travelled in the exercise of their calling,
and do not require definition by name; Henery Fray the
fourth shearer, Susan Tall's husband the fifth, Joseph
Poorgrass the sixth, young Cain Ball as assistant-shearer,
and Gabriel Oak as general supervisor. None of these were
clothed to any extent worth mentioning, each appearing to
have hit in the matter of raiment the decent mean between a
high and low caste Hindoo. An angularity of lineament, and
a fixity of facial machinery in general, proclaimed that
serious work was the order of the day.
They sheared in the great barn, called for the nonce the
Shearing-barn, which on ground-plan resembled a church with
transepts. It not only emulated the form of the
neighbouring church of the parish, but vied with it in
antiquity. Whether the barn had ever formed one of a group
of conventual buildings nobody seemed to be aware; no trace
of such surroundings remained. The vast porches at the
sides, lofty enough to admit a waggon laden to its highest
with corn in the sheaf, were spanned by heavy-pointed arches
of stone, broadly and boldly cut, whose very simplicity was
the origin of a grandeur not apparent in erections where
more ornament has been attempted. The dusky, filmed,
chestnut roof, braced and tied in by huge collars, curves,
and diagonals, was far nobler in design, because more
wealthy in material, than nine-tenths of those in our modern
churches. Along each side wall was a range of striding
buttresses, throwing deep shadows on the spaces between
them, which were perforated by lancet openings, combining in
their proportions the precise requirements both of beauty
and ventilation.
One could say about this barn, what could hardly be said of
either the church or the castle, akin to it in age and
style, that the purpose which had dictated its original
erection was the same with that to which it was still
applied. Unlike and superior to either of those two typical
remnants of mediaevalism, the old barn embodied practices
which had suffered no mutilation at the hands of time. Here
at least the spirit of the ancient builders was at one with
the spirit of the modern beholder. Standing before this
abraded pile, the eye regarded its present usage, the mind
dwelt upon its past history, with a satisfied sense of
functional continuity throughout -- a feeling almost of
gratitude, and quite of pride, at the permanence of the idea
which had heaped it up. The fact that four centuries had
neither proved it to be founded on a mistake, inspired any
hatred of its purpose, nor given rise to any reaction that
had battered it down, invested this simple grey effort of
old minds with a repose, if not a grandeur, which a too
curious reflection was apt to disturb in its ecclesiastical
and military compeers. For once medievalism and modernism
had a common stand-point. The lanceolate windows, the time-
eaten arch-stones and chamfers, the orientation of the axis,
the misty chestnut work of the rafters, referred to no
exploded fortifying art or worn-out religious creed. The
defence and salvation of the body by daily bread is still a
study, a religion, and a desire.
To-day the large side doors were thrown open towards the sun
to admit a bountiful light to the immediate spot of the
shearers' operations, which was the wood threshing-floor in
the centre, formed of thick oak, black with age and polished
by the beating of flails for many generations, till it had
grown as slippery and as rich in hue as the state-room
floors of an Elizabethan mansion. Here the shearers knelt,
the sun slanting in upon their bleached shirts, tanned arms,
and the polished shears they flourished, causing these to
bristle with a thousand rays strong enough to blind a weak-
eyed man. Beneath them a captive sheep lay panting,
quickening its pants as misgiving merged in terror, till it
quivered like the hot landscape outside.
This picture of to-day in its frame of four hundred years
ago did not produce that marked contrast between ancient and
modern which is implied by the contrast of date. In
comparison with cities, Weatherbury was immutable. The
citizen's THEN is the rustic's NOW. In London, twenty or
thirty-years ago are old times; in Paris ten years, or five;
in Weatherbury three or four score years were included in
the mere present, and nothing less than a century set a mark
on its face or tone. Five decades hardly modified the cut
of a gaiter, the embroidery of a smock-frock, by the breadth
of a hair. Ten generations failed to alter the turn of a
single phrase. In these Wessex nooks the busy outsider's
ancient times are only old; his old times are still new; his
present is futurity.
So the barn was natural to the shearers, and the shearers
were in harmony with the barn.
The spacious ends of the building, answering
ecclesiastically to nave and chancel extremities, were
fenced off with hurdles, the sheep being all collected in a
crowd within these two enclosures; and in one angle a
catching-pen was formed, in which three or four sheep were
continuously kept ready for the shearers to seize without
loss of time. In the background, mellowed by tawny shade,
were the three women, Maryann Money, and Temperance and
Soberness Miller, gathering up the fleeces and twisting
ropes of wool with a wimble for tying them round. They were
indifferently well assisted by the old maltster, who, when
the malting season from October to April had passed, made
himself useful upon any of the bordering farmsteads.
Behind all was Bathsheba, carefully watching the men to see
that there was no cutting or wounding through carelessness,
and that the animals were shorn close. Gabriel, who flitted
and hovered under her bright eyes like a moth, did not shear
continuously, half his time being spent in attending to the
others and selecting the sheep for them. At the present
moment he was engaged in handing round a mug of mild liquor,
supplied from a barrel in the corner, and cut pieces of
bread and cheese.
Bathsheba, after throwing a glance here, a caution there,
and lecturing one of the younger operators who had allowed
his last finished sheep to go off among the flock without
re-stamping it with her initials, came again to Gabriel, as
he put down the luncheon to drag a frightened ewe to his
shear-station, flinging it over upon its back with a
dexterous twist of the arm. He lopped off the tresses about
its head, and opened up the neck and collar, his mistress
quietly looking on.
"She blushes at the insult," murmured Bathsheba, watching
the pink flush which arose and overspread the neck and
shoulders of the ewe where they were left bare by the
clicking shears -- a flush which was enviable, for its
delicacy, by many queens of coteries, and would have been
creditable, for its promptness, to any woman in the world.
Poor Gabriel's soul was fed with a luxury of content by
having her over him, her eyes critically regarding his
skilful shears, which apparently were going to gather up a
piece of the flesh at every close, and yet never did so.
Like Guildenstern, Oak was happy in that he was not over
happy. He had no wish to converse with her: that his bright
lady and himself formed one group, exclusively their own,
and containing no others in the world, was enough.
So the chatter was all on her side. There is a loquacity
that tells nothing, which was Bathsheba's; and there is a
silence which says much: that was Gabriel's. Full of this
dim and temperate bliss, he went on to fling the ewe over
upon her other side, covering her head with his knee,
gradually running the shears line after line round her
dewlap; thence about her flank and back, and finishing over
the tail.
"Well done, and done quickly!" said Bathsheba, looking at
her watch as the last snip resounded.
"How long, miss?" said Gabriel, wiping his brow.
"Three-and-twenty minutes and a half since you took the
first lock from its forehead. It is the first time that I
have ever seen one done in less than half an hour."
The clean, sleek creature arose from its fleece -- how
perfectly like Aphrodite rising from the foam should have
been seen to be realized -- looking startled and shy at the
loss of its garment, which lay on the floor in one soft
cloud, united throughout, the portion visible being the
inner surface only, which, never before exposed, was white
as snow, and without flaw or blemish of the minutest kind.
"Cain Ball!"
"Yes, Mister Oak; here I be!"
Cainy now runs forward with the tar-pot. "B. E." is newly
stamped upon the shorn skin, and away the simple dam leaps,
panting, over the board into the shirtless flock outside.
Then up comes Maryann; throws the loose locks into the
middle of the fleece, rolls it up, and carries it into the
background as three-and-a-half pounds of unadulterated
warmth for the winter enjoyment of persons unknown and far
away, who will, however, never experience the superlative
comfort derivable from the wool as it here exists, new and
pure -- before the unctuousness of its nature whilst in a
living state has dried, stiffened, and been washed out --
rendering it just now as superior to anything WOOLLEN as
cream is superior to milk-and-water.
But heartless circumstance could not leave entire Gabriel's
happiness of this morning. The rams, old ewes, and two-
shear ewes had duly undergone their stripping, and the men
were proceeding with the shear-lings and hogs, when Oak's
belief that she was going to stand pleasantly by and time
him through another performance was painfully interrupted by
Farmer Boldwood's appearance in the extremest corner of the
barn. Nobody seemed to have perceived his entry, but there
he certainly was. Boldwood always carried with him a social
atmosphere of his own, which everybody felt who came near
him; and the talk, which Bathsheba's presence had somewhat
suppressed, was now totally suspended.
He crossed over towards Bathsheba, who turned to greet him
with a carriage of perfect ease. He spoke to her in low
tones, and she instinctively modulated her own to the same
pitch, and her voice ultimately even caught the inflection
of his. She was far from having a wish to appear
mysteriously connected with him; but woman at the
impressionable age gravitates to the larger body not only in
her choice of words, which is apparent every day, but even
in her shades of tone and humour, when the influence is
great.
What they conversed about was not audible to Gabriel, who
was too independent to get near, though too concerned to
disregard. The issue of their dialogue was the taking of
her hand by the courteous farmer to help her over the
spreading-board into the bright June sunlight outside.
Standing beside the sheep already shorn, they went on
talking again. Concerning the flock? Apparently not.
Gabriel theorized, not without truth, that in quiet
discussion of any matter within reach of the speakers' eyes,
these are usually fixed upon it. Bathsheba demurely
regarded a contemptible straw lying upon the ground, in a
way which suggested less ovine criticism than womanly
embarrassment. She became more or less red in the cheek,
the blood wavering in uncertain flux and reflux over the
sensitive space between ebb and flood. Gabriel sheared on,
constrained and sad.
She left Boldwood's side, and he walked up and down alone
for nearly a quarter of an hour. Then she reappeared in her
new riding-habit of myrtle-green, which fitted her to the
waist as a rind fits its fruit; and young Bob Coggan led on
her mare, Boldwood fetching his own horse from the tree
under which it had been tied.
Oak's eyes could not forsake them; and in endeavouring to
continue his shearing at the same time that he watched
Boldwood's manner, he snipped the sheep in the groin. The
animal plunged; Bathsheba instantly gazed towards it, and
saw the blood.
"Oh, Gabriel!" she exclaimed, with severe remonstrance, "you
who are so strict with the other men -- see what you are
doing yourself!"
To an outsider there was not much to complain of in this
remark; but to Oak, who knew Bathsheba to be well aware that
she herself was the cause of the poor ewe's wound, because
she had wounded the ewe's shearer in a -- still more vital
part, it had a sting which the abiding sense of his
inferiority to both herself and Boldwood was not calculated
to heal. But a manly resolve to recognize boldly that he
had no longer a lover's interest in her, helped him
occasionally to conceal a feeling.
"Bottle!" he shouted, in an unmoved voice of routine. Cainy
Ball ran up, the wound was anointed, and the shearing
continued.
Boldwood gently tossed Bathsheba into the saddle, and before
they turned away she again spoke out to Oak with the same
dominative and tantalizing graciousness.
"I am going now to see Mr. Boldwood's Leicesters. Take my
place in the barn, Gabriel, and keep the men carefully to
their work."
The horses' heads were put about, and they trotted away.
Boldwood's deep attachment was a matter of great interest
among all around him; but, after having been pointed out for
so many years as the perfect exemplar of thriving
bachelorship, his lapse was an anticlimax somewhat
resembling that of St. John Long's death by consumption in
the midst of his proofs that it was not a fatal disease.
"That means matrimony," said Temperance Miller, following
them out of sight with her eyes.
"I reckon that's the size o't," said Coggan, working along
without looking up.
"Well, better wed over the mixen than over the moor," said
Laban Tall, turning his sheep.
Henery Fray spoke, exhibiting miserable eyes at the same
time: "I don't see why a maid should take a husband when
she's bold enough to fight her own battles, and don't want a
home; for 'tis keeping another woman out. But let it be,
for 'tis a pity he and she should trouble two houses."
As usual with decided characters, Bathsheba invariably
provoked the criticism of individuals like Henery Fray. Her
emblazoned fault was to be too pronounced in her objections,
and not sufficiently overt in her likings. We learn that it
is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they
reject, that give them the colours they are known by; and in
the same way people are specialized by their dislikes and
antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no
attribute at all.
Henery continued in a more complaisant mood: "I once hinted
my mind to her on a few things, as nearly as a battered
frame dared to do so to such a froward piece. You all know,
neighbours, what a man I be, and how I come down with my
powerful words when my pride is boiling wi' scarn?"
"We do, we do, Henery."
"So I said, 'Mistress Everdene, there's places empty, and
there's gifted men willing; but the spite' -- no, not the
spite -- I didn't say spite -- 'but the villainy of the
contrarikind,' I said (meaning womankind), 'keeps 'em out.'
That wasn't too strong for her, say?"
"Passably well put."
"Yes; and I would have said it, had death and salvation
overtook me for it. Such is my spirit when I have a mind."
"A true man, and proud as a lucifer."
"You see the artfulness? Why, 'twas about being baily
really; but I didn't put it so plain that she could
understand my meaning, so I could lay it on all the
stronger. That was my depth! ... However, let her marry an
she will. Perhaps 'tis high time. I believe Farmer
Boldwood kissed her behind the spear-bed at the sheep-
washing t'other day -- that I do."
"What a lie!" said Gabriel.
"Ah, neighbour Oak -- how'st know?" said, Henery, mildly.
"Because she told me all that passed," said Oak, with a
pharisaical sense that he was not as other shearers in this
matter.
"Ye have a right to believe it," said Henery, with dudgeon;
"a very true right. But I mid see a little distance into
things! To be long-headed enough for a baily's place is a
poor mere trifle -- yet a trifle more than nothing.
However, I look round upon life quite cool. Do you heed me,
neighbours? My words, though made as simple as I can, mid be
rather deep for some heads."
"O yes, Henery, we quite heed ye."
"A strange old piece, goodmen -- whirled about from here to
yonder, as if I were nothing! A little warped, too. But I
have my depths; ha, and even my great depths! I might gird
at a certain shepherd, brain to brain. But no -- O no!"
"A strange old piece, ye say!" interposed the maltster, in a
querulous voice. "At the same time ye be no old man worth
naming -- no old man at all. Yer teeth bain't half gone
yet; and what's a old man's standing if so be his teeth
bain't gone? Weren't I stale in wedlock afore ye were out of
arms? 'Tis a poor thing to be sixty, when there's people far
past four-score -- a boast'weak as water."
It was the unvaying custom in Weatherbury to sink minor
differences when the maltster had to be pacified.
"Weak as-water! yes," said Jan Coggan. "Malter, we feel ye
to be a wonderful veteran man, and nobody can gainsay it."
"Nobody," said Joseph Poorgrass. "Ye be a very rare old
spectacle, malter, and we all admire ye for that gift."
"Ay, and as a young man, when my senses were in prosperity,
I was likewise liked by a good-few who knowed me," said the
maltster.
"'Ithout doubt you was -- 'ithout doubt."
The bent and hoary 'man was satisfied, and so apparently was
Henery Frag. That matters should continue pleasant Maryann
spoke, who, what with her brown complexion, and the working
wrapper of rusty linsey, had at present the mellow hue of an
old sketch in oils -- notably some of Nicholas Poussin's: --
"Do anybody know of a crooked man, or a lame, or any second-
hand fellow at all that would do for poor me?" said Maryann.
"A perfect one I don't expect to at my time of life. If I
could hear of such a thing twould do me more good than toast
and ale."
Coggan furnished a suitable reply. Oak went on with his
shearing, and said not another word. Pestilent moods had
come, and teased away his quiet. Bathsheba had shown
indications of anointing him above his fellows by installing
him as the bailiff that the farm imperatively required. He
did not covet the post relatively to the farm: in relation
to herself, as beloved by him and unmarried to another, he
had coveted it. His readings of her seemed now to be
vapoury and indistinct. His lecture to her was, he thought,
one of the absurdest mistakes. Far from coquetting with
Boldwood, she had trifled with himself in thus feigning that
she had trifled with another. He was inwardly convinced
that, in accordance with the anticipations of his easy-going
and worse-educated comrades, that day would see Boldwood the
accepted husband of Miss Everdene. Gabriel at this time of
his life had out-grown the instinctive dislike which every
Christian boy has for reading the Bible, perusing it now
quite frequently, and he inwardly said, "I find more bitter
than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets!" This
was mere exclamation -- the froth of the storm. He adored
Bathsheba just the same.
"We workfolk shall have some lordly-junketing to-night,"
said Cainy Ball, casting forth his thoughts in a new
direction. "This morning I see'em making the great puddens
in the milking-pails -- lumps of fat as big as yer thumb,
Mister Oak! I've never seed such splendid large
knobs of fat before in the days of my life -- they never
used to be bigger then a horse-bean. And there was a great
black crock upon the brandish with his legs a-sticking out,
but I don't know what was in within."
"And there's two bushels of biffins for apple-pies," said
Maryann.
"Well, I hope to do my duty by it all," said Joseph
Poorgrass, in a pleasant, masticating manner of
anticipation. "Yes; victuals and drink is a cheerful thing,
and gives nerves to the nerveless, if the form of words may
be used. 'Tis the gospel of the body, without which we
perish, so to speak it."
Content of CHAPTER XXII - THE GREAT BARN AND THE SHEEP-SHEARERS [Thomas Hardy's novel: Far From The Madding Crowd]
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